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Saturday, June 02, 2012

For the past 2 months, a new term had come into our vocabulary called Twitter Gulag (or as is well known on Twitter #TwitterGulag) but nobody really knows about it or why it is about. I had initially become aware of it about the end of April when I had heard that Twitter had suspended Chris Loesch’s (@ChrisLoesch) account three times in the span of 2 hours, including when he was only back for 45 minutes before being blocked again. Thanks to his wife Dana Loesch (@DLoesch), Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) and others, Chris’ account was reinstated.

Since then, many conservatives have had their Twitter account suspended, most recently David Morgan, who goes by the Twitter account @BlueLantern02. For some time it was unknown as to how accounts get suspended, but thanks to a site known as The Trenches, we have the inside story as to how #TwitterGulag was formed and what we can do to stop it.

Here are a few excerpts from the article:

Thanks to the work of Twitter user @SemperBanU (SBU) (give a follow, if you feel like it), the exploit, and how it was disseminated among Lefty’s has become apparent. According to SBU, what the Lefty jerks discovered is that the “block and report for spam feature” IS COMPLETELY AUTOMATED. There is not a human sitting at the other end to review the reports, there’s just a computer, and like any machine, it can be fooled.

So let’s say you’re a new Twitter user. You find your way to the #tcot realm, and start following certain prominent conservatives, like Dana Loesch (@DLoesch), or Sean Hannity (@SeanHannity). You see that they will sometimes reply to random fellow conservative users. So you start to @ reply their tweets, in hopes of becoming part of the conversation or getting a retweet.

Now, here comes the system exploit. So when you @ reply them, the Twitter system sees this as an “unsolicited reply”, meaning you are tweeting the person without them having asked you to. (Much like Spambots do.) Now, a large quantity of “unsolicited” replies, along with an imbalanced following/follower ratio, and what will that computer think? That you’re a spambot yourself.

THE CONTENT OF YOUR TWEETS IS NOT IMPORTANT. IT’S HOW YOU ARE OPERATING WITHIN THE SYSTEM.

So if some of the Lefty’s that are aware of this exploit happen across you , they can hit you with the “Block and Report for Spam” button, and the Twitter computer at the other end will look at those factors, see that it meets the criteria, and suspend the account. SBU also notes that along with @ replies, diving into a hashtag too vigorously can also make one vulnerable. Think #STOPRUSH and some of the users who seemed to get dinged by this attack when they wandered into that tag.

So basically the system is automatically run and there is nobody working it. Fair enough, but is there more behind this system? Let us read further on shall we?

According to SBU, the originator of this attack seems to be one Neal Rauhauser. (Shocking I know). At the beginning of April, Rauhauser began to contact Charles Johnson (@lizardoid and of Little Green Footballs fame), an unholy alliance if there ever was one. Rauhauser passed this fun little exploit along to Jazzytail (Charles – see: his ponytail), and Jazzytail passed it along to HIS followers and comrades, with the specific intent of targeting conservative types.

Now I know you are probably thinking that the name Neil Rauhauser sounds familiar. Well he is, as he is an associate of none other than Brett Kimberlin, the infamous Speedway Bomber and the one who had just this past Tuesday won a hearing (AUDIO) and got a peace order against Aaron Walker so Walker cannot blog, talk, or even mention Kimberlin for the remainder of the year.

Now that we have Kimberlin on the defensive, what can we do to maintain it? The answer, according to The Trenches, is simple.

We can adjust our habits, but I’d rather not. This is an attack meant to discourage people from freely associating with those they want to, and there can be no doubt that it is, indeed, an attack on free speech. Hit one of Jazzytail’s criteria, and he’ll send his henchmen your way to click that Block and Report button.

But, seeing as how Twitter’s liberal bias is pretty well confirmed, perhaps if fire was fought with fire here, and a bunch of butthurt Lefty’s start complaining to Twitter about this particular exploit, something might actually happen.

This election has taken on a whole new spin, especially as what had been brought out over the past week on not only this show but other shows like TB-TV and even on Fox News. We need to use this information and turn the tables on the left en route to winning the White House, maintaining the House of Representatives, and winning the Senate in November. It is in this manner that we can shut down Twitter Gulag. Until then, we need to keep the pressure on Twitter to free those who are held in Twitter Gulag, and I will keep an update as to who is in there and also their accounts so we can get them freed.